Physics Week in Review: September 13, 2014

This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with Caltech’s Spiros Michalakis about quantum computing, quantum information, and when we might expect Google to have a quantum computer inside every self-driving flying car.

This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with Caltech's Spiros Michalakis about quantum computing, quantum information, and when we might expect Google to have a quantum computer inside every self-driving flying car. Then there was a bunch of stuff about the implications for space and time being emergent that blew Jen-Luc Piquant's mind and should inspire science fiction fans everywhere.

The sound of an atom has been captured. Scientists show the use of sound to communicate with an artificial atom. They can thereby demonstrate phenomena from quantum physics with sound taking on the role of light.

Big Bang Mystery Extends Into Nearby Galaxy, Puzzling Cosmologists. Astronomers think stars should contain three times more of the element lithium as they actually do—and new observations of distant stars add to the mystery.

Check out this clever Rube-Goldberg machine that is powered by light and magnifying glasses. Per Laughing Squid: "Japanese Internet service provider au Hikari created an intricate and fascinating Rube Goldberg machine of sorts that uses a solid beam of light as fuel. The amplified light fuels a number of different elements like a tub of water and a marble moving down a chute, but it all keeps coming back to optics."

True Tales of Science: When two theoretical physicists crossed paths at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, the Story Collider was born.

When MIT Publishes Science Fiction, You Should Pay Attention. "This year’s edition [of Twelve Tomorrows] is guest-edited by Bruce Sterling, who prefaces the collection of stories, interviews, and reviews with an admission that while the MIT Technology Review, in its ordinary incarnation, serves up the kind of speculative material that science fiction writers treasure (and occasionally crib from), the fiction issue is there to make sense of the larger context from which these technologies emerge."

Watch A Man Climb Into An Active Volcano: "George Kourounis rappelled nearly 400 meters (1,300 feet) into an active volcano to have the adventure of a lifetime and, of course, take a selfie." Know who else did something crazy like that? A 17th century Jesuit priest and polymath named Athanasius Kircher. Check out these remarkable 17th Century Maps Of The Earth's Interior by Kircher, who has been hailed as the last Renaissance man and “the master of hundred arts.” His masterwork Mundus Subterraneuswas inspired by a subterranean adventure Kircher himself made into the bowl of Vesuvius.

Researchers Reel from Defunding of Only UC-Owned Observatory. "For [Alex] Filippenko and others, Lick Observatory, perched just east of San Jose, California, on Mount Hamilton, represents the university’s fundamental contract with the people of California to cultivate the next generation of scientists and humanists. Yet, last September, to the outrage of many UC astronomers, students and lawmakers, the UC Office of the President announced it would be withdrawing all funds from the observatory by 2018 to shift these resources to newer facilities like the Thirty Meter Telescope, a $1.2 billion international collaboration currently under construction."

The History of the Helium Crisis (podcast): "how the helium market got to the edge of that economic cliff, why some physicists rely so heavily on helium, and what they're doing now to survive in the helium market."

"Halong Bay-0215," by James Proctor, http://jamesmakes.com

This Code-Based GIF Art Replicates Nature's Natural Algorithms: It's very much an evolutionary process, where the best ideas survive and are refined, with occasional mutations or leaps forward. That's reflected in the images, which visually, in addition to the behavior that generates them, are inspired by biology and the natural world.”

Does life play dice? "What could be more irresistible than the idea that two of the most mysterious subjects in science – quantum physics and life – are connected?"

"Towards the end of his relatively short life (he died at age 66, completing work enough for a number of very gifted and exacting people) Huygens embarked down the science fiction road in pre-science fiction days, writing wonderful and provocative outre ideas within what was his general/.universal statement of knowledge of all things , a wonderful book entitled Cosmotheoros, The Celestial World Discover'd: or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets."

So You Want to Understand Bayes' Theorem and/or Look at Photos of Cats. "The problem with p-value is that it doesn’t take any past evidence into consideration." Fantastic explainer from Jamie Bernstein.

Go With The Co-Flow To Stabilize Chaotic 'Whipping' In Microfluidic Jets. "When researchers created a whipped jet in polydimethylsiloxane oil, a viscous dielectric material, they were surprised to see the chaotic motion switch over to a steady-state helical structure."

Kurzgesagt Explains Neutron Stars and the Weird Ways in Which They Work. "Neutron Stars are some of the strangest things in the Universe. Not quite massive enough to become black holes they are basically atoms as big as mountains with properties so extreme it’s mind-blowing. And if you get too close to a neutron star you are in big trouble…"

Star Trek: Papercraft: "Alex Manfredini turned his love of sci-fi ... into a beautiful line of finely crafted paper creations of the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701."

Run away! Run away! Eh, not so fast. Germans Boared with Chernobyl Radiation: "NBC wanted to make sure we were scared of radioactive boars roaming the German countryside, since there isn’t enough real scary things going on in the world this week."

You Can Finally Send Secret Messages Inside Pictures of Kim Kardashian. "An art and computer science student at Carnegie Mellon named Maddy Varner has cracked the code of making codes: smuggle your secret messages across the web by hiding them in pictures of Kim Kardashian."

The Long Shadow of Fungal Networks in Hyphae Pendant Lamps from the Folks at Nervous System. "No two lamps are the same; they simply let their formulas do the designing and then print up the results. The resulting lamps cast eerie networks of shadows, reminding us of the lurking fungal networks that live largely out of sight and are only noticed when they bloom as mushrooms."

Where are you, Dr. Frank Baxter? "In the 1950s and early 1960s, AT&T and the Bell Telephone System produced nine films about science, which were broadcast on prime-time network television and attracted a substantial audience."

Cool Infographic of the Week: A Shift in Nuclear Powers details the past and future of the world's nuclear reactors. "Early nuclear adopters like France and Germany are curtailing their programs, even though analysts... say nuclear is necessary to keep worldwide carbon emissions in check. Emerging economies may take up the mantle: Planned reactors in China and Russia could keep the world’s inventory stable."

U.S. Science Suffering From Booms And Busts In Funding. "Nationwide, about 16 percent of scientists with sustaining (known as ‘R01′) grants in 2012 lost them the following year, according to an NPR analysis. That left about 3,500 scientists nationwide scrambling to find money to keep their labs alive.”

An Harmonic Analyzer, 1916: "The name does feel as though it touches the boundaries of most of the mouth, and that is basically what this analog computer does, analyzes sound, and record it in lovely waves."

An Animated Short Breaking Down the Mechanics of Impact During a Bicycle Crash. "Although no two crashes are identical, two main types of force—linear and rotational—are related to the majority of brain injuries. Most real-world impacts actually subject your brain to a combination of both linear and rotational forces."

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large.

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Subscribe Now!Physics Week in Review: September 13, 2014This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with Caltech’s Spiros Michalakis about quantum computing, quantum information, and when we might expect Google to have a quantum computer inside every self-driving flying car.

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